· Private foundation
Max and Bella Stein Foundation
Its FY2019 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Read this first · the figures below need context
73% of Max and Bella Stein Foundation’s FY2019 grant dollars went to Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemeth Leisrael) Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2019 names 10 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2017, the last year Max and Bella Stein Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 17 organizations, $384k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2019.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2017
- Under $10k16 grants · $38k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $78k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $269k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BARRACK HEBREW ACADEMY | $98,500 |
| MUHLENBERG COLLEGE | $70,000 |
| VANGUARD CHARITABLE FUND | $50,000 |
| GERMANTOWN JEWISH CENTER | $50,000 |
| STRATFORD FESTIVAL OF AMERICA | $25,000 |
| CEASEFIRE PA EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION | $22,500 |
| TIDES CANADA FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| THE SCHECHTER INSTITUTES | $10,000 |
| BROADWAY CARES | $7,500 |
| LIVE LIKE BLAINE FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| BRYN MAWR FILM INSTITUTE | $5,000 |
| RADNOR STUDIO 21 | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| ADATH ISRAEL | $2,985 |
| RANCHO RELAXO | $2,000 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Your human-services grants (FY17–17, $500) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
Which US states your grants reach
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 52% of Max and Bella Stein Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +25% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2017, 0 since wound down; 15 grantees were first funded in FY2017 (too recent to call). Read against FY2017, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2019, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- JMJACK M BARRACK HEBREW ACADEMY3× · 2017–2019 · $220k · revenue +70%
- MCMUHLENBERG COLLEGE3× · 2017–2019 · $140k · revenue +5%
- BMBRYN MAWR THEATRE FILM INSTITUTE3× · 2017–2019 · $35k · revenue +3%
Funded once
- TCTIDES CANADA FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $20k
- NLNational Liberty Museumone grant, 2018 · $10k · revenue -52%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2018 · $10k
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
The weitzman national museum of american jewish history, on independence mall in philadelphia, presents educational programs and experiences that preserve, explore, and celebrate the history of jews in america. its purpose is to connect…
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
Philadelphia jewish film and medias mission is to educate and engage diverse philadelphia communities, jewish and non-jewish alike, by presenting world-class film premieres, repertory cinema, and associated programs that are inspired by…
The museum of jewish heritage - a living memorial to the holocaust is new york's contribution to the global responsibility to never forget. see schedule o for additional information.
Chartered by a unanimous act of congress, the museum is america's national institution for the documentation, study, interpretation, and education of holocaust history and serves as our country's memorial to the victims of the holocaust.…
The university is composed of several colleges and schools providing undergraduate, graduate, professional and post-doctoral education and training and research and clinical programs.
The mission of the brooklyn institute of arts and sciences, d/b/a brooklyn museum (the "museum") is to bring people together through art and experiences that inspire celebration, compassion, courage, and the will to act. (see schedule o).
As philadelphia's jesuit catholic university, saint joseph's provides a rigorous, student-centered education rooted in the liberal arts. we prepare students for personal excellence, professional success, and engaged citizenship. striving…
Support the hebrew univ. of jerusalem, israel's foremost center of higher edu. & research.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jewish Funders Network and the most unlike its peers is Project Meow. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 32 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
23 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 23 of the 36 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds JEWISH NATIONAL FUND (KEREN KAYEMETH LEISRAEL) INC ↗
- Who funds JACK M BARRACK HEBREW ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds MUHLENBERG COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds VANGUARD CHARITABLE ENDOWMENT PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds BRYN MAWR THEATRE FILM INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds BROADWAY CARESEQUITY FIGHTS AIDS INC ↗
- Who funds THE SCHECHTER INSTITUTES INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds LIVE LIKE BLAINE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds RANCHO RELAXO INC ↗
- Who funds Radnor Studio 21 Inc ↗
- Who funds National Liberty Museum ↗
- Who funds MOMENTUM UNLIMITED INC ↗
- Who funds UP WITH PEOPLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FUNDERS NETWORK ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds PROJECT MEOW ↗
- Who funds CHARITIES AID FOUNDATION AMERICA ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY SERVICE ↗
- Who funds KIMMEL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE OF NOETIC SCIENCES ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: The Max and Bella Stein Charitable Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Charities Aid Foundation America · American Endowment Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · American Online Giving Foundation Inc
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization Max and Bella Stein Foundation funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Max and Bella Stein Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Max and Bella Stein Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.